


Finding Home

by A Caffeinated Crisis (TabbbyWright)



Series: What it Means to Move Forward (Post Series AU) [1]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Absolutely nothing graphic but Ruri and Yuto are teenagers and they're in love sssoooo, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everyone has their own body, F/M, I'M SORRY I HAVE AN ANTI-YUSHO BIAS, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Post Series AU, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The RuriYuto content is in ch2, The pawnship is mostly implied in this particular fic, Yusho is a bad dad, this is extremely self indulgent, vomit mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-10-27 08:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17763389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TabbbyWright/pseuds/A%20Caffeinated%20Crisis
Summary: Having more or less spent his life alone aside from classmates, up until meeting Ruri and Shun, living in the Sakaki household was… strange.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hiiii and welcome to the first thing I'm posting for the ARC-V post series AU I've been playing with! I have a bunch of fics drafted and not posted (whoops) for? No good reason? So here's part of one of them, I need to finish it off before I post the other half, featuring RURI!!
> 
> Please see the Series page for more info about what I'm doing with this whole thing.

Having more or less spent his life alone aside from classmates, up until meeting Ruri and Shun, living in the Sakaki household was… strange. Yuto couldn’t bring himself to spend a lot of time there—it felt alien and weird and he couldn’t consider it more than a place to sleep. More often, he found himself at the Kurosakis. Somehow, it was more comfortable to be a guest than it was to be where Yoko insisted was home. Maybe it was because Ruri was there, maybe it was because Shun was familiar, but the Sakaki household was never the same kind of comfortable. 

It was strange, too, to exist with Yuya in such a mundane way, and not exist _inside_ of him as he had done for so long. He’d gotten used to feeling Yuya’s emotions with the intensity of a hurricane and now that was gone—he felt nothing off of Yuya.

With that said though, he could read Yuya better than anyone else could, he was realizing. He could tell when Yuya was faking a smile no one else noticed, he could tell when Yuya was swallowing back tears with practiced ease. He could see when Yuya was on the precipice of falling apart, and that he would admit it to no one. Sora and Yuzu in particular could be sharp when they wanted to be—notice that _maybe_ Yuya was lying to their faces, but it was always with uncertainty, and when Yuya pushed back, they didn’t generally pry. Not that Yuto was interested in making Yuya spill his heart out if he didn’t want to, but he made a point of finding excuses to extract his counterpart—his friend—from situations, to gently remind him that he didn’t _have_ to be happy all the time. Sometimes, Yuya would crack and cry against Yuto for awhile, but not often.

So maybe part of what killed him about the Sakaki household was having to know that no one else noticed when Yuya was hurting. So many people that _should_ have known him as well as Yuto did, simply didn’t.

**/ / /**

Yusho Sakaki was Yuto’s least favorite person these days, and that was saying something. There were a lot of people Yuto didn’t really like—lots of people in Academia, for instance (forgiveness was hard, even if you knew they’d been brainwashed).

But Yusho… Yusho always managed to get under Yuto’s skin. He would come and go as he pleased, and Yuto was happier when he was gone. When he was around, Yuya was excited and full of energy and so, so eager to please. Energy pulsed under his skin, barely contained thrill from his dad being _around_.

But when Yusho was around, Yuya was even worse about not getting upset. He swallowed it, smothered it until his happiness was so clearly a facade that Yuto didn’t understand how everyone could just ignore the hollow smile on his face. Couldn’t they see the difference between when Yuya was genuinely happy and when he wasn’t?

When Yusho left, often with nothing more than a casual goodbye before being gone again for months to who knows where, Yuya would mope around the house for days, but in the time after, he would get to be just a little more honest about his feelings. Yusho would return and everything would go back to square one.

But it wasn’t _just_ Yuya and Yusho’s relationship that made Yuto dislike Yusho—it was that he really thought he could treat the other boys like Yuya, with equal success. It was that Yusho, on more than one occasion, had tried to convince Yuto of the same idea—of smiling when you’re sad until you’re not. Before the war, it probably would’ve worked. Before the war, Yuto was naive and happy and his biggest worry was whether Ruri would like the presents he made her.

Now though, though Yuto did firmly think that duels should be about fun and making people happy, he didn’t buy into the concept of swallowing your emotions until you stopped feeling them. If you weren’t having sincere fun with a duel, what was the point?

And in your day to day life, what did you gain from swallowing your feelings? Yuto had enough problems with stress and anxiety and panic, pretending he wasn’t sad or mad when he was just seemed like a great way to make things worse. The more he bottled things up inside of himself, the sicker he got, and he threw up from anxiety anyway—throwing up from _deliberately_ stressing himself out _more_ was not something he was interested in doing.

He shut down Yusho politely before shutting him down more firmly, and when neither thing worked, he walked out on Yusho.

He stopped preaching to him after that.

**/ / /**

Though the Sakaki household was a strange place to be, it wasn’t all bad. After all, it let him get to know his counterparts better—get to know them as people, beyond the confines of the war. Yuri, for example, was more or less the same, still kind of a sadist, definitely an asshole, but… not in the way that made Yuto’s skin crawl. Their brief merge had let Yuto see some things he probably shouldn’t have, but it gave him a better idea of where Yuri, a horrible person ended, and Yuri, just an asshole of a teenager began.

He kind of liked Yuri as an asshole teenager. He was kind of a jerk, but Yuto could work with that. He wanted to get to know everyone, even Yuri, so he worked at it. Discovered that the way to get to the softer sides of Yuri was definitely with his plants. Conversations would start off condescending if Yuto misidentified a plant, but once Yuri got going, he softened, his touch delicate on the petals of peonies as he inspected them and explained to Yuto what they were, and asked how Yuto could be so stupid, they’re fucking peonies, how do you not know what a peony is.

He discovered they more or less shared the same opinions about Yusho, except Yuri thought Yusho was funny—in a sense. Funny in that Yuri thought he was truly, _truly_ an idiot.

“He tried that ‘smile, smile!’ crap on me too.” Yuri said, plucking a wilted leaf off one of his plants that Yuto had forgotten the name of, “ _Please_. Did he forget about that dumb therapist I have to see? No, why am I asking, he’s an idiot, of course he did. She would hit him with her clipboard if she heard him.”

Yuri moved on, running his fingertips over one of the vines of his tomato plant, “It would be better if he stayed away longer. I might have to kill him if he tries that nonsense on Yugo.”

“Yugo?” Yuto asked, wondering if the way Yugo hung on Yuri meant more than he thought. He watched Yuri roll his eyes.

“I have to share a room with him, I don’t want to deal with him growing some stupid emotional issue because of the one person that’s stupider than him in this universe.”

“That’s a weird way of saying you care about him, but okay.”

“Shut up.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruri and Yuto talk and Yuto wonders what home exactly _is._

One of his many afternoons at the Kurosaki’s, Yuto laid on Ruri’s bed while she studied, content in the quiet. Occasionally he would steal a glance at her, take in her beauty and remind himself that she was  _ here _ . She was here and in such a way that she could read a textbook in her pajamas, her long hair fingerbraided and pulled into a makeshift bun. She could breathe, focus on a book, and he could take this second to just reflect on that without there being any danger bleeding into their world. 

He turned his attention back to his phone, stretching out on her bed and letting himself melt into it. He had been here a couple of days already—he should go back to the Sakaki’s. He lived there, technically. They had adopted him, technically. His last name was Sakaki now,  _ technically _ . It was supposed to be his home, but it never brought him these feelings that being with Ruri did. This perfect relaxation and reassurance, this knowledge of where everything was. If he really thought about it, he didn’t know what exactly home was supposed to feel like, his life a patchwork of empty houses, and lonely dormitories. Everything had somehow been provided for him, if only in the barest sense. 

Something about Ray, something about wanting to protect the counterparts even as she destroyed the man that was their origin. Mysterious, unpredictable, unknown, Ray. Had Zarc had a home? Yuto didn’t know, he didn’t have any memories of the man. He didn’t know if any of them did, or if it was even possible. To ask was to breach the fact that they’d almost disappeared into being someone else, the fear and anxiety, the rightness and wrongness that it brought on. 

He didn’t want to think about if it would’ve been better if they’d fit together again. He didn’t want to think about what it would’ve been like to disappear from a world he wasn’t sure he ever fit into in the first place. 

“Yuto?” 

He didn’t want to think about the same thing happening to Ruri. 

“Yeah?”

“You’re spacing out.” She put her book aside, moved to lay down beside him, sprawled on her stomach like he was, “Are you okay?”

She cupped his cheek and all the thoughts left him like smoke on the wind, his senses filling up with Ruri. 

“Mm… Thinking.”

“Thinking too much, probably.” She smiled softly, put her hand on his back, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, I don’t even want to think about it.” 

She laughed and his heart fluttered in his chest. Ruri.  _ His _ Ruri. 

Ruri sat up, stretched out, and without much of a pause, pulled off her top and tossed it aside. 

“I might be able to help with that.” 

Yuto felt his face burn, his heart skip a beat. He was never getting used to this, was he? He was never going to get used to how Ruri could be so delicate and graceful and ladylike and then carry herself so  _ directly _ at times… like this…

She smiled playfully and then frowned a bit, “Yuto?”

“I-I think you succeeded already.” 

“Oh, did I? Is that it then?”

He rolled onto his back, looked at the ceiling, looked up at her, reached out and took her hand, gently pulling her down on top of him.

“No, it’s not.” 

They kissed, and Yuto felt like the sharp, anxious edges of himself smoothed out, the heat that he felt all pleasant. The excitement was anything but panic and he could stop thinking here and let all his guards down. 

Maybe for him, home was a person.    

**/ / /**

Another day, a warm evening, Yuto was on the bridge with Ruri. The bridge that phantom memories told him was where Yuya would come to cry, though that wasn’t why Yuto was here. The view was nice, it was quiet, faint starlight reflecting on the water. It was just the two of them. She was pressed up against his side, her hand over his on the guardrail. 

A twittering bird sounded and Ruri pulled out her phone. He watched her curiously, couldn’t resist smiling when she made a cute pout and aggressively tapped at her phone.  

“Serena got suspended again.” Ruri said, huffing a bit. 

“Who’d she punch this time?”

“That’s just it—she didn’t!” Ruri gave the phone one final tap before putting it back in her purse, “She  _ threatened _ to though.”

“I would think people would know better than to get on her nerves by now.” Yuto frowned. He felt his own phone buzz in his back pocket once, twice, three and four times. He didn’t have to pull it out to know that Yuri was probably complaining that Serena was camping on their couch again, and that Yuya was insisting that it was fine. Another buzz came, then another. 

“Apparently not.” She sighed, leaned against him, “Are you going home tonight?”

“Mm… Probably. Shun’s been getting tense.” 

“Nii-san can get over it.” 

“It’s fine, I don’t want to piss him off.” Yuto shrugged, “Besides, I haven’t been there in a week, Yuya’s probably stressing.”

“That’s fair but… is there a time when he  _ isn’t _ ?” 

“If you catch him baking at two in the morning he’s fine.”

Ruri was quiet a moment before speaking up again, “You don’t miss being there at all?”

“It’s… weird.” 

“How so?”

“It’s just another building, just with three people I’m kinda-sorta related to and sort of adoptive parents.” Yuto let the words sit in the air for a moment, letting Ruri’s presence soothe him and relax the words out of him. 

“There’s not anything to miss, I guess.”

“Hmm…” Ruri hummed to herself for a moment, “You could move in with us, you know that.” 

“So Shun can die of high blood pressure?”

“No, he’s fine. He’ll be fine. He’s an adult, he can act like one.” 

Yuto chuckled, “I think you’re more mature than he is.”

“I know I am.” Ruri said simply, “Not that the bar is high…” 

She shook her head, “But that’s not the topic. If you don’t want to move in with us, do you want to go back to the Sakaki’s?”

Yuto shrugged. He didn’t have much of an answer.

“I think you should go back, try to be there more than you’re at my house.” 

“Oh?”

“I love you, and I love having you around, but I think maybe…” Ruri was quiet for a long moment, looking out thoughtfully over the river. 

“I think maybe it’s worth working at making the Sakaki’s a home. You’ve talked about your counterparts a lot—you like them, don’t you?”

“I do…”

“Then I think you should go back and spend time with them. You don’t have to love Yoko and Yusho, you know.”

“Mm.”

“So until you do that, I’m kicking you out. You can’t come over.”

“Seriously?” Yuto raised an eyebrow, amused more than anything. 

“Absolutely.” 

Ruri looked around, then quickly kissed Yuto’s cheek before stepping away. 

“I’m going home now, I have to call Serena and scold her. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks!”

“Rur—”

“Bye, Yuto!” 

**/ / /**

The trip back, Yuto just let his thoughts drift. He hadn’t really ever thought about working at it. He hadn’t ever thought that it was something you  _ could _ work at. With Ruri, the comfort simply was once the anxiety of impressing her had worn off. 

But she was right—he did like his counterparts. He liked that he had been able to slowly get to know them as people. So maybe home could be a person, but also it could be a house that held some people that you did like, even if you didn’t find yourself fond of everyone there. 

Walking up the sidewalk, he pulled out his keys, unlocked the door and stepped inside, the sound of barking immediately greeting him. Three dogs, one of them new, came skittering into the entryway, barking and wagging and jumping at his legs. He leaned down, petting the dogs as best he could as they butted each other out of the way, demanding attention. 

“I was wondering if you were ever coming back.” 

Yuto looked up to see Yuri leaning against the wall. The new dog immediately forgot Yuto, instead trying to jump on Yuri, who pushed him away with his foot, uncharacteristically gentle.

“Ruri kicked me out.” Yuto gently shooed the dogs away, sitting down now and unlacing his boots, “Is that your dog?”

“Absolutely not. It’s Yugo’s and I hate it.”

“Does it have a name?”

“Pochi.” 

“Cute.” Yuto set his boots aside, returning his attention to the dogs and petting them. The house was always full of strays… though he wondered how exactly Pochi came to be here. 

“Are you sticking around for awhile this time?” Yuri asked. 

“Yeah, why?”

“There needs to be at  _ least _ one other person here who isn’t stupid or spineless.”

“Don’t call Yuya spineless.”

“Whatever. He’s asleep, you can tattle to him later if you want. I have chores to do.”

Yuri walked off without another word, leaving Yuto with the dogs. He wondered if maybe that was Yuri’s way of saying that he missed Yuto? Or maybe that was a bold assumption. Yuto stood up, made his way upstairs to Yuya’s room— _ his _ room. 

If this was ever going to be a home for him, he might as well lay claim to his space in it. 

Maybe the work would be worth it. 


End file.
